Customers want digital services suppliers that will be with them for the long haul, that are dynamic and able to provide high-quality products and unparalleled service and support, worldwide, when necessary.

We knew this when we invented the managed print services market back when talk about "the cloud" was limited to meteorology, says Kevin Warren, Chief Commercial Officer at Xerox.

These days, when cloud enablement is table stakes, our document services are no longer limited to printing, nor available only to large enterprises. Even small and medium-sized businesses must navigate the "less-paper" office, reach sustainability goals, gain greater visibility and control of document processes and costs, and improve security with the latest authentication, encryption and virus protection technology.

Whether you're talking about managed print services, document imaging, security, workflow or mobility, Xerox is a partner that will be with you for the long haul. Xerox will help your company navigate the world's relentlessly changing technology.

I'm favorably biased, of course, but you don't have to take my word for it. Independent analysts study the document services market. They note the market's needs and examine the vendors. For your consideration, I share this roundup of analyst reports on our managed print and document services from the past few years.

In the first ever IDC MarketScape Worldwide Security Solutions and Services Hardcopy 2017 Vendor Assessment, Xerox was named a Leader. One of Xerox's main listed strengths in the assessment was its ConnectKey enabled devices, that were identified as among the best in class for addressing endpoint security risks and providing protection from internal and external cyber threats. (Source: "IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Security Solutions and Services Hardcopy 2017 Vendor Assessment," October 2017, IDC #US41988517, by Robert Palmer and Allison Correia)

Listing Xerox as a leader, Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends highlighted its established MPS program with a diverse customer base, services centred approach, and partnership with Hyland Software and Datawatch, which helped Xerox differentiate its MPS offering. (Source: "Managed IT Infrastructure: Managed Print Services Analysis," by Brendan Morse, InfoTrends, March, 2015. In a Porter's generic strategies analysis, companies are placed in accordance with how they seek competitive advantage in the market.)

Among traditional MPS vendors for workflow automation, Xerox was positioned first in brand perception in a digitisation study conducted by Quocirca. Xerox's commitment to enhancing its MPS offerings to tackle digital transformations of large and complex organisations has earned the company the top spot. (Source: Quocirca, "Digital transformation: Bridging the paper and digital gap," April 2016, by Louella Fernandes)

Quocirca: Managed Print Services Landscape 2017

Xerox was named as a leader in the Quocirca Managed Print Services Landscape for the eighth year in a row. It has maintained its leadership in Quocirca's evaluation of the MPS market due to its "global scale, comprehensive office and production MPS portfolio, and a long track record of excelling in global delivery, multivendor support, analytics and reporting", according to Louella Fernandes, research director at Quocirca. (Source: "Managed Print Services Landscape", 2017 by Louella Fernandes, Quocirca, July 2017)

Bytes Document Solutions (BDS) is Africa's leading document management technology and services company and the largest Xerox distributor in the world. It is the authorised Xerox distributor in 26 sub-Saharan countries offering the complete range of Xerox document equipment, software solutions and services. BDS forms part of JSE listed Allied Electronics Corporation (Altron).